Conventionally, drugs for oral application are, in general, taken with water or plain boiled water. Yet, it is difficult for patients having difficulties in swallowing, in particular, the elderly, children and the like to take drugs with water or plain boiled water.
For the elderly, children and the like, the drug in a form of capsule, tablet or the like is ground and mixed into rice, miso soup or juice to be taken, which is laborious and complicated. In addition, such a way of taking the drug makes release time of drug ingredients uncontrollable, inevitably leading to impairment of pharmacological effects and chemical reactions. Also, it becomes unfeasible to mask the tastes. In some cases, the intended pharmacological effects may not be attained.
The present applicants proposed a low calorie, non-sugar swallowing-assisting beverage, which beverage has a prescribed jelly strength and contains thickening agents such as agar and carrageenan, mannitol and to make the taking of the drug easier while retaining the intended pharmacological effects. A patent has been granted on this beverage (See Patent Literature 1).
Further, the present applicants improved the above-mentioned swallowing-assisting beverage and proposed a bitterness masking granular jelly beverage enabling bitterness to be masked even in drugs containing a basic substance with a nitrogen atom such as an amino group (See Patent Literature 2).
Patent Literature 1: Japanese Patent No. 3257983
Patent Literature 2: WO 2005/025622
Meanwhile, drugs such as crude drugs and herbal medicines are, in general, available mostly in the form of granules. Since each granule has, in many cases, low specific gravity, when the herbal medicine is put in the mouth together with water, the granule herbal medicine with powdery or gritty feel floats on the surface of the water, which makes the swallowing with water difficult. In addition, for crude drugs and herbal medicines, a large dose per one application also causes difficulties in the swallowing with the water in the mouth.
In order to facilitate the swallowing of these crude drugs and herbal medicines, it is thought, for example, to use the above-mentioned bitterness masking granular jelly beverage.
Yet, crude drugs and herbal medicines have a unique astringent taste, sour taste or sweet taste in addition to bitterness. Because of this, there are some cases where those drugs do not have a harmonized taste with the above-mentioned bitterness masking granular jelly beverage which contains animal fats and oils and/or plant fats and oils. Consequently, some may rather find more difficult to take the drug.
To improve the taste of the granular jelly beverage after the mixing with the drug, it can be thought, for example, to add an acidulant or the like to the granular jelly beverage. However, the simple addition of the acidulant causes aggregation of ingredients constituting the granular jelly beverage and disables appropriate gel formation. Thus, there is a case where the jelly is not formed suitably for coating the drug.